Here's Cause Of Miami Condo Collapse Champlain Condo Towers, Surfside

the champlain towers south condominium in surfside florida was one of the jewels of miami beach it had million dollar views of the ocean million dollar views of the pool and million dollar condos in there that were just decked to the nines folks so the question is is why did it collapse let's figure it out we have all the answers for you so here you can see it's in miami it's just north of miami beach and we're zooming in and there's our flyover of what the complex looked like there before it collapsed so this is from google earth and you can see just how far it is from the beach it's actually several hundred feet from the beach okay so i just want to zoom in on the complex of how it looked before and just pay attention here to this pool deck area and here's the main driveway now this pool deck area and on the driveway and the porter corsair and all of that these are all on the ground level and there was a 120 space parking garage beneath them and so here is the part of the pool deck that collapsed when the building collapsed okay so this is the hotel next door this is the pool where the tourists that shot this video i'm about to show you they shot it from across the street here about seven minutes before the building collapsed okay now looking down at the buildings here here's the building that collapsed and don't pay attention to this because this is old photography here there's actually a brand new very nice looking oval shaped blue glass condo there right now and then here's where the cars drive in right off the street and park in this little bit smaller parking lot that we showed you is about 18 to 20 spaces here i'm going to zoom in slightly because this is the hotel next to it here is the champlain towers east but and then right here is the champlain towers north so as we zoom into it you can see it's basically built the same way that with the same floor plan and the residents in here have mostly decided to stay put because engineers have already inspected it and given it the all clear that nothing happened there there's no damage at the bottom of their columns or anything look at this incredible postcard view this is why people flocked to this building let's form the timeline starting 36 hours before their collapse so what you're looking at right here folks is 36 hours before the condo collapsed and what happened was a pool contractor came in to take pictures to give a quote for the pool project that they were going to work on as part of the whole entire 40-year recertification and engineering of the entire complex so while he's in there he goes and looks in the pool equipment room we will show you where it is on the property map in a second but i want you to take a look at what he found in there that really made him concerned so these pictures he turned over to the miami herald so these pictures courtesy of the miami herald and when he saw there's a couple of things here so here's the room here's two different pictures that he shot and let's take a look right up here in this upper left hand corner look what we see here see we have spalling of the concrete and right here where you see me moving the cursor through those dark lines there that is the rebar and the rebar has obviously rusted and exposed and expanded because it had been wet at some point in time most likely and what happens is when rebar gets rusty it expands or tries to expand to several times its own width and when this happens the concrete has nowhere to go so it just shatters breaks chunks of it comes flying off and it's because of those forces of the expansion of the rusty rebar are greater than the concrete's ability to remain intact and not shear so that must be some pretty incredible forces there so we call that spalling and you see it happened here and it looks like it happened a little bit further down the on this beam follow here see the cursor where i'm moving the cursor on this angled pipe right here he then went over to by this pipe and here it is right here turned around and took a picture looking back this way and so this right here is that same spalling that we were seeing over here but now we're seeing that that second section of it the back side of it so as you can see folks there was quite a bit of it there exposed and that should have anybody alarmed if this is any type of major concrete beam i'm not certain that this could have had anything to do with the cause of the failure of the whole complex there because this is too far away from where the building fell so let's go take a look but before we do that take a look at the floor look at all the water all over the floor this should not be folks this absolutely should not be all over the floor there like that and that's just a lot of water and then same here at the beginning of it on the other end where the the motor is see chlorine would be really bad because this concrete would soak that up it would get to the rebar and rust out the rebar and then you would have spalling so any of you that have a pool you already recognize this is a standard pool pump and this is the pool filter so i don't know if these guys are leaking and if they are are they leaking chlorine water onto the slab here in this room again i don't see any major issues there it should be bone dry in there it should not be a drop of water i mean that's every pool owner's worst nightmare and same with over here right and then here's something else that kind of caught my eye that i don't like i don't like the fact this these motors here are sitting on top of like i don't know if those are bricks or if it's wood on top of bricks here it looks like the backside view of the the pool pump it looks like the pump is either sitting on a brick or a piece of wood on top of a cinder block and that to me is just not right that is very unprofessional it should either be mounted on a pad or possibly raised up off the floor on one of those aluminum rtu brackets you know those are those stands that they put on the roofs to elevate the acs off the roof now just outside the pool equipment room inside the garage the pool contractor said that he noticed some water puddling on the floor there around space number 78 but he failed to get any pictures of it because it wasn't part of his task i bet he's kicking himself for that now but note where the water is it's right at the bottom of the entrance ramp into the garage from the street pay attention because coming up we will see whether this came into play or not as part of the collapse i got this photo from the miami condo investments website they had a pretty good shot of the pool so the arrow here points to where that pool equipment room is down below remember we are at ground level at grade and it is down below grade and the garage level one story below the equipment room is in that narrow space there between the pool and the wall and here is another angle of the pool here this is the architect's original 1979 plan for the champlain towers condominium so there you can see the close-up of it down on the garage now i suspect that that wall that we are looking at here in the photo on the left i believe that is the wall of the pool itself so there's water on the other side of that wall so now that we have the pull theory out of the way let's take a look at that video that surfaced yesterday on the news all over the place from the tourists that were staying in the hotel directly across the street on 88th street now it's around 1am in the morning and in this blue hotel across the street from the collapsed condo which is right here a couple is swimming in this pool at about one o'clock in the morning and they hear noises coming out of the building here so they get out of the pool and they start shooting across from the pool at the noises and this is the entrance into the garage [Music] so here we are about seven minutes before the building is about to collapse and she zooms in here and you can see something that's very disturbing in there and we'll zoom in on it a little closer for you let's show you what's going on here okay so now i've slowed it down for you and enhanced the video as best i could and what we're looking at here this is the gate on the ramp that leads down below grade into the garage so what you're seeing is a water pipe hanging down that's just gushing huge amounts of water but look all over the ramp you're seeing huge chunks of concrete that's what it looks like that'll may have fallen off of the ceiling or other columns so what you're looking at right there folks is the collapsed pool deck that came down on top of the garage and it ripped down probably the sprinkler pipe but take a closer look at the tourist photo here take a look at this right here hanging off the ceiling so that is either a broken beam or it is a broken soffit now a soffit wouldn't be as bad because it's just you know fake wood hanging down but if that's a beam then that could spell disaster so this is the outside of the garage entrance during better times when the building was still standing and you can see whatever that beam is goes completely across so the pool deck collapsed about 10 minutes ago and we know that this timeline is correct because check this out now cnn and several of the local news stations had reported that two different residents had reported seeing the pool deck collapse before anything happened including this lady here mother and daughter so they were in their units and they heard some noise and she saw cracking develop in her walls and ran out to inform the security desk and then came back and got her kids and that's when she saw the garage collapse so her and her kids escaped from their first floor condo they ran out onto collins avenue and ran four blocks up the road before stopping okay so the other day our local abc news station local 10 did a story here about this woman she's a beautiful 40 year old cassandra stratton she's a actress and a pilates instructor so she was on the phone with this man her husband he was up in washington dc and somewhere around 1 30 she's feeling the building trembling so at about 1 30 according to him his wife was standing on the balcony of the apartment on the fourth floor there overlooking the atlantic ocean and she looks out the side window and sees that the pool just cratered the pool deck now she thought that there was a sinkhole that's what she said to him and as she was describing it to him the phone went and he never heard from her again okay now let's take a look at that famous security camera footage of the condo collapse so if you look at this condo building right next to the champlain towers here on collins avenue this is called 87 park and back in the far southeast corner of the pool area they have a security camera and it was aimed directly towards the northeast right at the champlain towers and captured everything now as you can see the collapse of the champlain condo towers here on surfside was over in about 15 seconds so now we're going to enhance the video and take a look at it and analyze it here i enhanced the video now let's look at it in slow motion and a lot of commentators have gotten this wrong a lot of them have said the center part of the building collapsed in two sections but if we're going to show you here it actually dropped in three sections so here's our first pass through it and now that that middle section is gone you're going to see the east side the oceanfront apartments are now going to collapse because they now lack their support columns all right so i have now enhanced the video and let's take a look at it now first i just want to show you what's happening as the structure collapses because now i have full control over all the frames there now if you notice something here and let me bring it back up look what it's doing to this part of the right tower so a lot of the news people and other commentators got it wrong everybody's showing you the three parts of the building that fell down they're all saying this fell down then the park behind it fell down and then this but that's not true pay special attention to here right up to these two white stripes because you can see that as the building's starting to fall look what it's already doing it's sagging all of these upper floors here on the this is the part that faces the ocean and so the lady that that was on the phone with her husband that saw the deck collapse was right here on the fourth floor right around here all right right where the arrow is so as it's coming down watch how it's shearing the whole left half of that right side tower see that boom now it's so skinny and now you're going to see that's why it collapses a few seconds later where it just can't take the load and watch what the building does as it comes down you're going to see it it's leaning a little towards us and a little towards the left and as it starts to pancake down you can see it doesn't quite come down exactly straight down it's falling a little to the left and so a lot of the debris is gonna come down and splash all over the first part of the pool deck okay now as i said before let's take a look i'm to rewind it back up remember i said follow these keep your eye on these two white lines and i want to show you where that is on the building because watch it's going to disappear okay so that's it right there let's go take a look at the photo i have of the building here and these are those two white stripes i just told you about right they got annihilated so it got ripped right down the building right down this line here so everything from here over is all that was left just a really skinny part it looked like a giant candy bar just sticking up in the sky there so just this whole part was left this whole midsection dragged all of this it tore all of this off of the building and this is i believe a sharing wall and that's why it came off so clean so it started right here in the middle of this one which just happens to be right above the pool deck here's a bird's-eye view the next morning of the pool deck how it collapsed and we're going to come back to this in a second but i just wanted to point out look there's still water on the pool the water's beautiful no debris even apparently landed in the pool at all so it was still in pretty good shape but everything around it collapsed okay so here we are on the pool deck looking from the southern wall so this was supplied by the miami-dade fire department the pool would be off to the right over here just to the right of where these chairs and tables are now let me point out something interesting we're looking directly north at the rubble pile as it tumbled down onto just before the pool deck so i guess the edge of the building would have been right back here probably where this fireman is standing now look at something interesting here see pictures can tell you a lot of information here you see these columns here you see this number 42 here you see this number 72 in number 73 this is down in the garage so the plaza the whole pool deck here was supposed to be up here on top of these pilings in this deck here where these cars are parked these six cars here are supposed to be up here right where the white meets the brown so they are now this looks like about five or six feet down into the garage why didn't it fall all the way because these are sitting on top of cars right now in fact you could see the bumps here that were sitting on top of cars this just goes to show you so this is space number 42 this is space number 72 and space number 73. let's go take a look at them so let's go back to our garage view remember i showed you 42 right here that was the column we were just looking at and then i showed you 72 and 73 it was this column right here that we were looking at so it appears that all of this had collapsed right in this area here we don't know the extent of it but we do know it left piles of debris on the bottom of the ramp here's the ramp remember that entrance ramp we showed you the video looking straight down the ramp and we saw the pile of debris at the bottom here of the ramp so we know for a fact then that the pool deck collapse took in all the way up probably around in this area here i'm going to estimate right in this area all of this collapsed okay now here are some other really good crucial evidence this was taken by getty images and i'm assuming this was the next morning but take a look folks here here's a great bird's eye view of the actual collapse of the pool deck the pool is still intact right here and you can see the shape of where the collapse was all the way up into here and into here ventures over into here and i think the break happened right here here's where you drive in off the street these cars are still at street level all of these cars here looks like between six and eight cars they tumbled down into the garage right below them and that white stripe right there is the top of what should have been the garage because down in the garage the posts are all painted white okay so here here's the general cut right here it goes right along here and i'm willing to bet it's all the way around in this area here here's the entrance to the garage this is the ramp is probably like right right around over here the the ramp ends at the 50 mark of the property which would be right here see so the ramp ends like right around here and the bottom of the ramp here is where initially we saw that video that had all of the stuff on the bottom of the floor there that was coming off the ceiling too and then the broken pipe was there so where is this located well we know that this is spaces 72 and 73 right here see remember 72 and 73 those are those two spaces right there and remember folks right over here is space 78 where the pool contractor the other day saw all of that water pulled up right around here and we still don't know why but isn't it a coincidence that it happens to be all in this general area where the the pool deck collapsed so another thing too you can see how this picture verifies what i said this is the part of the building that last part to fall that was facing the ocean and remember i said it was leaning towards us towards the security camera which was way back over here and it fell slightly over to the left there's your layers and this is why i've been telling people i don't think they're going to find any more survivors because this is the roof here let's assume this was 12 you know the roof and then 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4. so the lady who was supposedly out on her patio talking to her husband when she said she saw the pool deck collapse over here and she saw the what she thought was a sinkhole she forgot the garage was underneath there so that's how that happened but you can see how it almost looks like a package of bacon whenever you've got a pancake building that collapses it's just devastating there really aren't many voids in there here's video of the sunken pool deck and if you look on the right you'll see the space they're looking right into the garage where it has sunk down to that level now now what's interesting is look at the back wall i mean it sheared right off of that wall whatever happened here whatever wait or whatever failure mode occurred here it took the entire pool deck down here vertically and what i am still struggling with is the the size of these columns here and what really bothers me folks here is how the pool deck at every one of these columns it just sheared itself right down the column these support columns are supposed to do just that support so why did it happen why did the concrete just strip itself from all of these strands of rebar that you can see on every one of these clean i mean i don't even see a chunk of concrete it's as if the concrete was so maybe wet or god knows what happened to it that it couldn't even hang onto the rebar but it just seemed every one of these failed in the exact same way this right here is the hot tub and you can see why the pool is still intact this thing is built for tough it's got good thick solid concrete all the way around it so it it hung in there i believe there was a car right here um so what else can we tell by this here and so you know the rubble pile actually stopped short of the deck so some people might be inclined to think well maybe the building fell and that caused the deck to collapse no the deck collapsed first we have multiple witnesses and we've already showed you that now here's something interesting look at all the air conditioners you notice how they're barely even damaged at all because this is the roof they were on the roof and they just wrote it down so if some people had been on the roof i'm willing to bet they would have survived this because it doesn't fall down at the speed of gravity it pancakes it you drop maybe 10 feet to the floor below you and then it slowly one floor at a time you know does it over several seconds and the other tank too you're probably wondering why is this wavy because it's sitting on top of the cars below the entire garage is all the way here and all the way under the around the other side of the pool all completely underneath this entire area here and so there's a car there you can see all of these bumps where it's sitting over the tops of cars okay now looking at this picture i wanted to point out something else to you all of these little things keep catching my eye look at the size of the columns here on this building that's still standing this is the tower that's still there look at the other columns over here they look a lot skinnier folks and i'm questioning why why would these columns be bigger than all the other ones it just certainly just caught my eye and this could be one of the reasons why this building is still standing when the other ones failed because look this building is practically on top of where the pool deck collapsed this entire area collapsed this building is still standing looking just to the left of this you can see directly into the garage down below where it collapsed but yet the building above it is still standing just perfectly with the big columns this shows it even better look at the size of all of these columns right here in the tower that survived see nice and beefy and meaty and these guys get these little skinny toothpicks just like the fiu pedestrian bridge here in miami that collapsed a few years ago if you look over here on the right why is diagonal member 11 right here skinny while the member on the other end of it is nice and thick see how these others are all nice and thick but yet this one suddenly got skinny on us and the failure occurred right here see even when you look at the plans for the garage all of these columns over here on the lower left belong to the tower that's still standing and even right here why are these so much bigger and thicker than all of these support columns here on the other tower so that one really gives me pause folks and i'm wondering if that's not a a mistake you know i'm not going to rush to judgment on this but i'm just wondering whenever i've seen collapses that i've studied in the past i see this kind of thing and i always wonder why was that member skinnier than the other one okay now now let's see which of the columns failed first so as you can tell the whole center part of the building starts to fall first so it's this whole part everything from the sheer wall right here all the way over to this building and including probably two of the columns here because you gotta take into account this part fell and then over here on either side of those white stripes that collapsed as well see it just ripped it right off of that building so let's see which of those columns it is all right so as we look at the floor plan here this is the shear wall this is that center part that everybody says collapsed first and i agree that this is the part that collapsed first it also as i showed you in the picture took out this column here and probably some of this so this part of the building the right hand side of the building got sheared right here and then so we have these five posts so we have these five columns one two three four five okay so looking back at the overview of the entire building in the plaza remember it's one two three four five it's those columns that gave way first and if you overlaid the garage floor plan on top of this you can see which ones it appears to be it appears to be one two three four five and you notice how it just so happens to include our good friend parking space number 78. do you remember we were talking about that twice already so here i've drawn my red ellipse here around what i think are the first columns to collapse and i got to tell you folks as an engineer you know i've always pointed out to you everything has to die from all different angles and we've looked at the timing we've looked at the witness accounts and everything and even the pool contractor that said this is where he saw that pool of water so there must have already been something going on here in this area leaking from the ceiling and as we saw from the tourist video that we're shooting down this way this is where we saw the pile of everything so this is where it all started right here and once these five critical columns go and then the building above it starts to collapse that's it it's all over okay so let me show you here on the video where i think all of the other people got it wrong and why and i wish they had given us more video from the start this isn't really at the start this was somebody hand-holding their cell phone after it already started in front of the security screen so watch that first section in the middle so there it goes right taking down the right section with it but you see how it's leaving up here this section behind it so we know that all of the building didn't just collapse at once even though a lot of the conspiracy theory people are coming in here telling me oh that was a timed explosion it was a controlled implosion and it was done on purpose and blah blah blah no so it came down first then here you can see the second part of it is starting to drop right but wait there's more because after it drops you see that dark shadow up top here you're going to see something forming here and it's going to be the third part that drops right there do you see that you see this part right here this has not yet dropped so that looks like the far north wall of the condo that see how it's still standing there and you can see it still has a light there on so it's amazing that the electricity is even still working at that point and so there it goes and then right now boom you can start to see that third section drop so everybody got it wrong all of the people that showed it breaking off in in basically this section and then the back section and then this section it wasn't three sections it was really four sections that it failed in so these guys here from architects journal i think had the most accurate drawing of what collapsed first although i still think that this yellow section here in this red all collapsed at once because i believe all of these columns gave away and then second would be this because it started to tear at this and then third would be back here and then fourth would be this section here that i just showed you a minute ago and then last would be right over here that skinny part of the tower that was left so these guys were the most accurate so far okay so how did it feel well this is that famous engineering report from 2018 where moribito consultants who we used some of their floor plans here in this video prepared this report they walked the property they found things they didn't like like they said all of the windows need to be replaced because numerous residents are reporting leaking that's not going to cause a problem they found cracks like you see here on some of the patios and spalling and again that's not going to tear down your building but they did say these do have to be repaired and that was actually being worked on already as part of their 40-year recertification plan they were getting ready to start it they were already doing stuff up on the roof this is what i think here is leading to the root cause of our problem here so he's talking about the whole pool deck entrance here and the waterproofing if you look right here he says the failed waterproofing is causing major structural damage to the concrete structural slab below these areas failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially that is the key word right there folks exponentially from 2018. here we are three years later and it has already expanded exponentially because they never got around to fixing it and so they they listed all of the stuff that's got to be done here they also said there was a major error in the design by the architects originally the reinforced concrete slab which is underneath the deck there it is not sloped to drain the water sits on the waterproofing until it evaporates this is a major error in the development of the original contract documents here's something else that makes me suspicious here's uh before the building collapse this is i got this from the mls system for apartment rental in the building but look at all the water that's pulled up here on the deck on a day where it's not raining and the rest of the deck isn't exactly wet either why are there these random collections of water here and what that says to me is that the liner underneath because the concrete substrate underneath all of these bricks is flat and not sloped to get rid of the water i think the water collects up in between the cracks of all these pavers whenever it rains and it just sits there until it can dry and that would add a lot of weight onto this pool deck see as part of the design the engineering company wanted to add sloping all over the place there on that deck that would help drain the water better so my theory is that we had a lot of water intrusion on the pool deck that eventually got down to the non-sloped concrete reinforcement structure below which eventually soaked up water and got the rebar all rusty and caused spalling all over the place and eventually it caused the collapse of the pool deck which pulled down five columns with it and caused the collapse of the entire building we will show you more engineering diagrams on the next video so make sure you watch these other two videos here that we've already uploaded on it and we'll see you on the next one you

Channel: jeffostroff

Views: 4,958,956

Rating: 4.7245502 out of 5

Keywords: building collapse, building collapsed, condo collapse miami live, condo collapse, condo collapse miami, condo collapse in florida, jeffostroff videos, miami building collapse, condominium collapse, miami apartment collapse cause, miami collapse cause, miami condo collapse cause, surfside building collapse, florida building collapse

Id: PEPyE2h6P4k

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ProfessionUpper2697]

Does anyone know what type of waterproofing membrane they used?